District to save in cost of renovations

Asbestos removal is being performed on two of Choffin's floors.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The Youngstown City School District expects to save some $500,000 from the cost of renovating the Choffin Career & amp; Technical Center by doing most of the building interior painting itself.
Asbestos removal work is now under way on the third and fourth floors of the 32-year-old Wood Street building, but construction contracts for the renovation won't be let until early next year. The district already knows it won't have enough state money in the construction fund to do all of the work, however.
The scope of the project has changed twice since it was first proposed.
Anthony DeNiro, assistant superintendent for school business affairs, said the Ohio School Facilities Commission's initial assessment put the project estimate at $4.68 million.
When the district's architectural consultant looked at the job, however, the estimate jumped to $11 million, DeNiro said.
That prompted OSFC to take another look at the project, and this time the state came back with a project assessment of $15.8 million.
OSFC said it was willing to put only $10.3 million into the job, leaving the district with a considerable shortfall if it wants to complete the entire project.
Cost-cutting move
The district doesn't have that kind of money available and has been looking at ways to prioritize the work and trim the cost, DeNiro said, explaining that taking on the bulk of the interior painting is one way to do that.
The painting cost estimate is $564,000 and Youngstown can cut that bill by about $515,000 by having its own maintenance people do most of the painting, he said, noting that district buildings are painted by maintenance staff on a rotating basis anyway.
As it stands, the project estimate is at $10.4 million.
There are a couple of big-ticket items -- replacing the building's windows at an estimate of $538,000 and rebuilding the parking lot at $312,000 -- that may be put off to a later date.
The school board is expected to decide that issue at its meeting Tuesday.
Those items were in the original assessment, but they weren't included in the directive to the architectural firm to begin preparing project specifications and they aren't part of the $10.4 million estimate, DeNiro said.
The district has asked the architect to give it a cost estimate on doing the design for the windows and parking lot on the chance that they might be included as alternates in the bid specifications, he said.
The board should have that information Tuesday as well. There also is the option of looking at those jobs in a separate contract later, he said.
gwin@vindy.com